Page 59 of Veil of Silence

“Did my dad know any of this?” Austin asked.

Nora shook her head. “No. He asked to speak with Christian, but I told him to wait. Prine had already interviewed him twice, and every time someone asked about the past, Christian shut down a little more.”

Austin could picture his father’s reaction. “And Dad agreed?”

“Eventually.”

That sounded about right. He would have argued until he exhausted every possible angle, then reluctantly accepted he wasn’t going to get his way.

Nora curled her fingers around the railing. “Now I keep wondering what he wanted to ask.”

“He may not have known anything concrete.”

“But he found something.”

Austin was about to respond when his phone vibrated inside his jacket.

Luke Wilder’s name appeared on the screen.

His gut tightened as he accepted the call. “Donnelly.”

Luke didn’t waste time. “We found Mikey.”

Chapter

Twenty-Two

Nora watched Austin’s expression change as Luke’s words came through the phone. His eyes sharpened, and the easy warmth that had briefly entered his face disappeared.

Austin met her gaze before tapping the speaker icon and holding the phone between them. “Nora is with me, by the way, and I’m on speaker.”

“Noted.”

“You said you found Mikey?” he asked.

“Yes, but he’s in bad shape,” Luke said through a faint hiss of static. “He has a serious head injury and hasn’t regained consciousness.”

Nora gripped the porch railing as relief and dread collided inside her. Mikey was alive, but that didn’t mean Preston was safe.

“Where did you find him?” Austin shifted the phone closer so Nora could hear.

“His truck was parked at an old pull-off along County Road Nine,” Luke said. “A search team found Mikey at the bottom of a cliff about half a mile away.”

Nora pictured the remote road and the dense forest surrounding it. No child should have been anywhere near that place. Had Preston been with him? Was the boy injured also?

Please, Lord . . . no.

Austin’s fingers tightened around the phone. “How far did he fall?”

“Thirty feet, maybe more. We won’t know exactly what happened until we finish processing the area, but right now, it looks like he went over the edge.”

“Accidentally?”

“That’s one possibility.”

“And Preston?” Austin asked.

Static filled the brief pause that followed. Then Luke said, “He wasn’t with him.”